Ultra Hand

The Ultra Hand is a toy created by Nintendo's Gunpei Yokoi and was released in 1966. It is an extending arm that reached out and grabbed objects.

Hong Kong Handarts, a company that distributed Asian products throughout the Western world, released the Ultra Hand in Australia. They altered the boxart so that the child is snatching an unsuspecting baby Kangaroo (Joey) out of its unhappy mother's pouch.

Development

Gunpei Yokoi was an engineer for Nintendo's playing cards assembly line. He had created the Ultra Hand as a personal project and had it in the factory when Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi came in. He found the Ultra Hand and with the permission of Gunpei he ordered his company to create over a million of them for the holiday. Yokoi has claimed that when Yamauchi summoned him, he was certain he would be fired for playing around with the toy while at work. Instead, he found that Yamauchi was extremely interested in the product. After it was released it sold an outstanding 1.2 million copies in Japan. The success of the product led Yamauchi to promote Yokoi and make him the manager of a new R&D studio, the first at Nintendo. Nintendo sold them for just $6 each.

Legacy

The Ultra Hand was Nintendo's largest success up to that time in the toy industry. They had developed several other toy products prior to 1966 such as the Rabbit Coaster and the Picture Cutter, but none had come close to achieving the same success as the Ultra Hand. Due to the success of the product, Nintendo opened up its first Research and Development division within the company, which Yokoi led. Nintendo has referenced the Ultra Hand in several of its video games. Nintendo also developed a Club Nintendo-exclusive WiiWare game called Grill-Off with Ultra Hand! that focused on the toy.